Los Angeles Takes Step Toward Developing The Largest Solar Energy Plant In The U.S.

[progree]

2. Some more detail than in the Forbes article, from the L.A. Times

The Forbes article doesn't have much more detail. It refers to this L.A. Times article:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-09-10/ladwp-votes-on-eland-solar-contract

It doesn't specify the MW capacity or MWH expected from either the solar or the size of the battery, except this:

The 3.3 c/KWh includes the battery system, and that the battery capacity is 4 hours ((probably at max battery power output, or more than 4 hours at reduced power output as all these battery systems are capable of that flexiblity, e.g. 8 hours at half power output; or 4 hours at full output plus 4 hours at half output etc., or whatever clever ramp-up / ramp-down trapezoid best fits the need subject to it's max MW and MWH limits -Progree))

California frequently produces more solar energy than it can use during the middle of the day, then fires up gas plants in the evening to meet electricity demand after sundown.

The Eland project would meet 6% to 7% of L.A.'s annual electricity needs and would be capable of pumping clean energy into the grid for four hours each night. ((that's what's needed to handle the high late afternoon - early evening customer demand after solar output fades, so as not having to start up additional natural gas plants -Progree)).

Large amounts of energy storage will almost certainly be needed to help replace the coastal gas plants that (L.A. Mayor) Garcetti decided would be shut down. A few months after announcing that decision, the mayor unveiled his Green New Deal plan, which sets targets of 80% renewable energy and 3,000 megawatts of energy storage for Los Angeles by the mid-2030s.

For now, the DWP still operates a natural gas plant in Sun Valley, known as the Valley Generating Station. And the city plans to build a new gas-fired power plant in rural Utah, with construction scheduled to begin this year. The 840-megawatt facility gas-fired plant will help replace Los Angeles’s single largest power source, the Intermountain coal plant, which provides about one-fifth of the city’s electricity and is slated to shut down in 2025.